


The Sharpest Knife in Caesar's Back

by Anonymous



Series: Within/Without [9]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: 3x05 insert, M/M, conceivably canon-compliant, it's not just a river in egypt diaz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24264841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The 118 betrayed Buck; Buck betrayed the 118.Eddie takes it personally.It’s all downhill from there.(insert for episode 3x05, "Rage")
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Series: Within/Without [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1738876
Comments: 17
Kudos: 289
Collections: Anonymous





	The Sharpest Knife in Caesar's Back

He only answered the phone because he was asleep. He fumbled it blindly and answered without looking at the screen. If he’d seen who was calling, he wouldn’t have picked up.

“Yeah?”

“Eddie?”

He almost did hang up then.

“Eddie? Are you there?”

A rush of fury cleared the last dregs of sleep from his brain. “No contact. Isn’t that the rule?”

“I—yeah.” Buck sounded miserable.

“Bye then.”

“Eddie, wait!”

“ _What_? What could you possibly want from me?”

“No, nothing, I—”

“Then don’t jeopardize your precious lawsuit.”

“Wait, don’t hang up, I—”

But Eddie wasn’t hanging up. He was sitting up in bed, wide awake, and building up a big head of steam. “You’re a fuckin’ asshole, you know that, Buck? A selfish fuckin’ asshole who just up and does whatever he wants, consequences be damned—how could you stab us in the back like this?”

“How could _I_?” Now Buck sounded pissed. “You, _all_ of you—you stabbed me first!”

“How d’you figure? I didn’t blow up that ladder truck, man.”

“You let Bobby bench me, you didn’t say anything—”

“It’s called chain of command, Buckley.”

“—and you went and replaced me with fuckin’ Bosko—easy come, easy go, huh? Well, congrats on your new best friend, hope she’s everything I’m—”

“You’re acting like a child,” Eddie snapped.

“You _all_ stuck your knives in my back,” Buck rapped back. “Even you. _Especially_ you.”

“Jesus you really are a spoiled brat.”

“I lost everything—”

“No, Buck, you didn’t. You still had a job, you still had your friends; you had Christopher and you had me. You threw that away all by yourself.” 

“But—”

“You’re a backstabbing little bitch, Buckley.” And yeah, that crossed a line, Eddie knew it as soon as the words left his mouth. But he was too angry to apologize.

“I didn’t want any of this to happen.” Buck’s voice sounded small and hurt over the line. “But you gave up on me.”

“You—” And suddenly the adrenaline dissipated, leaving a corrosive aftertaste in his mouth. He wanted to hang up the phone, pull the pillow over his face and scream until all the poison had drained out of his system. “This is a waste of my time. So are you, right now.”

“I didn’t actually call to talk about the lawsuit,” Buck said. “Did you—Eddie, did you see the video?”

“What video?”

“May Grant posted it an hour ago.”

“Why the fuck would I be stalking Athena’s _teenage daughter_ on social media?”

“No, not on—it’s a traffic stop video with Michael and Harry. She filmed it.”

“Is—” Eddie stood up so quickly the room spun around him. “Are they—”

“I don’t think they got hurt. But one of the cops slammed Michael over the hood of the car, and the other—” Buck’s voice cracked audibly—“Eddie, he pulled his gun on Harry.”

“Oh, Jesus. Hang on.” Eddie put Buck on speakerphone and searched for the video. It popped right up; one of the local news channels had already picked it up. He pressed play and watched the shaky footage of a cop detaining Michael outside the car, and then everything went sideways, lots of incoherent yelling, until Michael’s voice rose over the rest: “ _Don’t shoot my son! Don’t you shoot my son!_ ”

Eddie felt sick. He thought, inevitably, of Christopher. What he would do, how he would feel, if someone ever stuck a gun in Christopher’s face. “This is… beyond fucked up,” he said hoarsely. “There’ll—there’ll be an inquiry, right? Those guys will lose their badges, they’ll…” Even as he said it, though, he didn’t believe it. He wasn’t deluded, he knew how these things played out; they said justice was blind, but somehow she could still see white.

“Anyway, I thought you should know,” Buck said. “So you can call Cap.”

“What?”

“I can’t, but you can.”

The line went dead.

*

He called Bobby. Bobby confirmed that Michael, Harry, and May were unharmed—physically; the psychological trauma was another story—and he said that Michael and Harry were having The Talk now.

“Oh,” Eddie said, and mumbled something about how fucked up it all was.

“You’re the first to get in touch,” Bobby said. “How did you find out so quickly?”

“I, uh.” He hesitated. “Buck, he—he saw it first. He called me so I could… call you.”

“Oh,” Bobby said.

*

His son kept asking where Buck was.

“When is Buck coming over?”

“Can Buck eat dinner with us?”

“Why can’t _Buck_ take me to the park instead?”

He was running out of excuses.

“Dad, did you and Buck have a fight?” Christopher asked.

“Not exactly, buddy. Sometimes grown-up stuff just gets a little complicated,” Eddie said. 

“Well, why don’t you say you’re sorry so you can be friends again?”

 _Because I’m not the one who should be apologizing,_ he thought.

“Lights out,” he said, like a coward. “Time to go to sleep, bud.”

“I miss Bucky,” Christopher said, a whine creeping in. “He does all the voices when he reads the bedtime story.”

*

Privately, Eddie thought Bobby might have miscalculated. Consider the tsunami: blood thinners or no, Buck had not only survived, he had saved Christopher’s life and so many other lives, too. It was hard to imagine the Mayday call that would place him in greater extremis or demand any more of him than that. And, out in the field, Eddie could protect him—from himself, if need be.

Privately, that was what Eddie thought. It was his personal opinion. But his private thoughts and personal opinions were irrelevant here. The chain of command existed for a reason, and he would follow it. Follow Bobby. He hadn’t survived multiple tours in Afghanistan by questioning orders.

And even if he, Eddie, personally believed that Buck was ready to return to duty, he still had to contend with the fact that Buck was—what had he called him again?— _a backstabbing little bitch._ Oh, and the other thing: _exhausting._

That might have been a little harsh, in retrospect.

He sat in the locker room, glaring down at Buck’s contact on his phone, finger hovering over the “call” button.

“Trouble in paradise?” Lena asked, plopping down beside him.

Eddie hastily switched his phone off.

“Can you believe that guy turned down fifteen million dollars?” Lena said.

Eddie grunted.

“I mean, damn _._ Would _you_ turn down fifteen million dollars, Diaz?”

“I wouldn’t have opened a lawsuit,” Eddie said.

“You’re way too butthurt over the whole thing, dude. Newsflash, Buckley just wants his job back, it’s not about you.”

“It became about me when the lawsuit came with a no-contact rule and now my son cries at bedtime because Buck’s not around to read him stories the _right_ way with all the voices.” Eddie was breathing like an angry bull. “I have to keep making up excuses ’cause I can’t tell my kid his favorite person in the world, his fuckin’ _hero_ , is really just a selfish motherfucker who spells ‘team’ with a whole lotta _I_ ’s and—”

“Whoa, easy there, Eddie.” Lena cut him off. “You always this fun to be around?”

“What?”

“Make up with your boyfriend, already,” she said. “Then maybe I’ll get a chance to meet the real Eddie Diaz, huh?”

Eddie had learned the hard way: saying _Buck’s not my boyfriend_ generally backfired.

(Take Chimney for instance: “Say hi to your boyfriend for me,” he said to Eddie, as Eddie was leaving the station to collect Christopher from Buck’s place.

“Yeah, ha ha. You know Buck’s not my boyfriend, Chim.”

“It’s not just a river in Egypt, Diaz.”

“What?”

“The Nile.”

“ _What_?”

“Denial. The Nile. De-Nial. Get it? Finally, _Jesus_. Why is Maddie the only person who laughs at my jokes?”

“Because you suck at telling them, man.”)

“Back off, Bosko,” he said sharply. 

She didn’t look even remotely intimidated. That was the thing about Lena; nothing ever intimidated or impressed or fazed her in the slightest.

Except for one thing.

And she was leaning in, lowering her voice: “Gotta bail on our plans tonight, sorry. My captain’s getting out of the hospital, so I’m gonna head over to his place after Bobby’s thing. Another time, okay?”

“Yeah, cool, another time,” he said.

She squinted at him. “Don’t go to the junkyard by yourself, Eddie. You’re too much of a live wire, you need somebody to rein you in. I mean it, dude. Don’t fight tonight.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said breezily.

*

“We Will Rock You” was playing over the loudspeaker at the ring.

Eddie let the rhythm settle into his body. Stomp-stomp-clap.

Jab-cross-hook.

Jab-jab-cross.

As long as he kept his head clear and his focus sharp, these guys were pretty easy pickings.

Hook-cross-hook.

Most them had no technique to speak of. He could take them down with a few simple combinations.

Jab-hook-cross.

It got more interesting when he finally got an opponent with some kickboxing chops.

Hook-kick-cross.

Muay thai? Hell yeah. Dutch style? Bring it on.

Stomp-stomp-clap.

Buck’s face swam into view in his mind’s eye. Wearing that apologetic, hangdog expression. _Maybe we could find a way for me to still see Christopher?_

Eddie blocked too slowly, and his opponent landed a nasty uppercut on his forearm. He stumbled back into the fence, shaking his head to clear it. Served him fucking right, allowing his thoughts to drift. No distractions on the battlefield. In the ring. The ring, not the battlefield. He punted Buck out of his brain; more gently, he escorted Christopher out as well.

Stomp-stomp-clap.

Shannon, though. She could stay. She wasn’t a distraction, she was fuel. Her and her fucking divorce papers. Her cold blue lips and her broken body in the street.

_Buddy you’re a young man, hard man—_

He charged at his opponent. Double jab-right hook-left kick.

_Shouting in the street, gonna take on the world someday—_

Inside kick-cross-left hook.

_You got blood on your face, you big disgrace—_

They had to pull him off the last guy; Eddie hadn’t noticed him trying to tap out.

Someone raised his hand in the air. Eddie roared his victory and the crowd screamed right back. It was the best high in the world, adrenaline pumping, taste of blood in his mouth, feeling fucking invincible, finally back in control.

His mind was blissfully empty, his thoughts all pounded into submission.

He staggered back to his truck a short time later, dumping a bottle of water over his head before he pulled his shirt on. At least he was going home to an empty house, so he wouldn’t have to worry about Christopher seeing him like this, covered in blood and sweat and filth. He made a mental note to ice the gigantic bruise already forming on his elbow, and checked his phone.

He had a string of texts from Buck.

 _Missed you at the rage room_ , the first one said.

Then, a few minutes later: _Awesome news! I’m back on the 118, Cap just told me!!!_

And the messages continued:

_Can we put our shit behind us? I’d really love to see Christopher_

_I’m sorry. Life sucks without Chris and you in it_

_I know I fucked up. I’ll make it up to you_

_You guys didn’t stab me in the back, I stabbed you_

_Y tu Brutus? haha_

_Eddie?_

_You’re really pissed, huh_

And finally, the most recent message, only fifteen minutes old: _What did you mean the other day, when you said I wasn’t there to bail you out of jail? Is something going on, Eddie?_

He took a deep breath and rested his forehead against the steering wheel.  
  
_Yeah, Buck, something’s going on_

_I’ve lost my way with Chris_

_Don’t know how to be there for him when he won’t talk to me about what’s bothering him_

_I feel like I’m not in control_

_Shannon wanted a divorce_

_Might’ve crossed a line tonight_

_You’re still an asshole, but I need your help_

He didn’t actually type any of that. His phone sat idle on the console, until it buzzed with a new notification.

With a heavy sigh, Eddie picked it up.

It was from Buck, obviously. Who else would be texting him this late at night?

(Who else would be texting him at all?)

_I’m back at the firehouse on Monday. Guess I’ll see you then?_

He felt a shiver of something like—nerves? anticipation? Or maybe it was dread. He’d never been able to deceive Buck. Buck would take one look at him and know he’d gone off the rails.

Monday was gonna fucking blow.

**Author's Note:**

> [NB: Brian May would probably like it noted that Brian May wrote "We Will Rock You" and Freddie Mercury did not.]
> 
> How unpleasant to write Eddie & Buck at odds! Back to our regularly scheduled programming after this. Thank you for reading, you kind lovely people!


End file.
